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“‘THE lion! the lion!’ holloaed pharaoh.” 


See page 45. 


ALLAN THE HUNTER 


A Tale of Three Lions 


B V 

H. RIDER HAGGARD 

AUTHOR OF “ KING SOLOMON’S MINES,” 
“SHE,” “NADA THE LILY,” 

ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 


BOSTON 
LOTHROP PUBLISHING 



2nc? COPV, TWO COPIES RECEIVED- 

1898 . 


6668 

Copyright , i8q8, 
by 

Lothrop Publishing Company. 


Colonial ^rcss: 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston, U. S. A. 


CONTENTS. 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 

CHAPTER 

I. Eldorado 

II. The Fate of Jim-Jim 
III. The Lion-duel .... 


v PRINCE: ANOTHER LION 












ALLAN THE HUNTER 




ALLAN THE HUNTER 

A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


CHAPTER I. 

ELDORADO. 

Most of you boys will have heard of 
Allan Quatermain, who was one of the 
party who discovered King Solomon’s 
mines some little time ago, and after- 
wards came to live in. England near his 
friend, Sir Henry Curtis. He has gone 
back to the wilderness now, as these old 
hunters almost invariably do, on one pre- 
text or another. They cannot endure civ- 
ilization for very long, its noise and racket 
and the omnipresence of broadclothed hu- 


8 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


manity proving more trying to their nerves 
than the danger of the desert. I think 
that they feel lonely here, for it is a fact 
that is too little understood, though it has 
often been stated, that there is no loneli- 
ness like the loneliness of crowds, espe- 
cially to those who are unaccustomed to 
them. “ What is there in the world,” old 
Quatermain would say, “ so desolate as to 
stand in the streets of a great city and 
listen to the footsteps falling, falling, 
multitudinous as the rain, and watch the 
white line of faces as they hurry past, you 
know not whence, you know not whither? 
They come and go, their eyes meet yours 
with a cold stare, for a moment their fea- 
tures are written on your mind, and then 
they are gone forever. You will never 
see them again, they will never see you 
again ; they come up out of the blackness, 
and presently they once more vanish into 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


9 


the blackness, taking their secrets with 
them. Yes, that is loneliness pure and 
undefiled ; but to one who knows and 
loves it, the wilderness is not lonely, be- 
cause the spirit of nature is ever there 
to keep the wanderer company. He finds 
companions in the rushing winds — the 
sunny streams babble like Nature’s chil- 
dren at his feet ; high above him, in the 
purple sunset, are domes and minarets 
and palaces, such as no mortal man hath 
built, in and out of whose flaming doors 
the glorious angels of the sun do move 
continually. And then there is the wild 
game, following its feeding-grounds in 
great armies, with the spring-buck thrown 
out before them for skirmishers ; then 
rank upon rank of long -faced blesbuck, 
marching and wheeling like infantry; and 
last the shining troops of quagga and the 
fierce-eyed shaggy vilderbeeste to take the 


IO 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


place of the Cossack host that hangs upon 
an army’s flanks. 

“ Oh, no,” he would say, “ the wilder- 
ness is not lonely, for, my boy, remember 
that the further you get from man, the 
nearer you grow to God,” and though this 
is a saying that might well be disputed, 
it is one I am sure that anybody who has 
watched the sun rise and set on the limit- 
less deserted plains, and seen the thunder 
chariots roll in majesty across the depths 
of unfathomable sky, will easily under- 
stand. 

Well, at any rate he went back again, 
and now for many months I have heard 
nothing at all from him, and, to be frank, 
I greatly doubt if anybody will ever hear 
of him again. I fear that the wilderness, 
that has for so many years been a mother 
to him, will now also prove his monument 
and the monument of those who accompa- 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. II 

nied him, for the quest upon which he and 
they have started is a wild one indeed. 

But while he was in England for those 
three years or so, between his return from 
the successful discovery of the wise king’s 
buried treasures,' and the death of his only 
son, I saw a great deal of old Allan Quat- 
ermain. I had known him years before 
in Africa ; and after he came home, when- 
ever I had nothing better to do, I used 
to run up to Yorkshire and stay with 
him, and in this way I at one time and 
another heard many of the incidents of 
his past life — and most curious some of 
them were. No man can pass all those 
years following the rough existence of 
an elephant hunter without meeting with 
many strange adventures, and one way 
and another old Quatermain has certainly 
seen his share. Well, the story that I am 
going to tell you in the following pages 


12 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


is one of the later of these adventures ; 
indeed, if I remember right, it happened 
in the year 1875. At any rate, I know 
that it was the only one of his trips upon 
which he took his son Harry (who is since 
dead) with him, and that Harry was then 
about fourteen. And now for the story, 
which I will repeat, as nearly as I can in 
the words in which hunter Quatermain 
told it to me one night in the old oak-pan- 
elled vestibule of his house in Yorkshire. 
We were talking about gold-mining — 

“ Gold-mining ! ” he broke in ; “ ah ! yes, 
I once went gold-mining at Pilgrims’ Rest 
in the Transvaal, and it was after that 
that we had the turn up about Jim-Jim 
and the lions. Do you know it? Well, 
it is, or was, one of the queerest little 
places you ever saw. The town itself 
was pitched in a sort of stony valley, 
with mountains all about it, and in the 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 13 

middle of such scenery as one does not 
often get the chance of seeing. 

“ Well, for some months I dug away 
gaily at my claim, but at length the very 
sight of a pick or of a washing - trough 
became hateful to me. A hundred times 
a day I cursed my own folly for having 
invested eight hundred pounds, which was 
about all that I was worth at the time, in 
this gold-mining. But, like other better 
people before me, I had been bitten by 
the goldbug, and now had to take the 
consequences. I had bought a claim out 
of which a man had made a fortune, — five 
or six thousand pounds at least, — as I 
thought, very cheap ; that is, I had given 
him five hundred pounds down for it. It 
was all that I had made by a very rough 
year’s elephant hunting beyond the Zam- 
besi, and I sighed deeply and propheti- 
cally when I saw my successful friend, 


14 ALLAN THE HUNTER. 

who was a Yankee, sweep up the roll of 
Standard Bank notes with the lordly air 
of the man who has made his fortune, 
and cram them into his breeches pockets. 
‘Well/ I said to him, — -the happy vender, 
— ‘it is a magnificent property, and I only 
hope that my luck will be as good as 
yours has been.’ He smiled ; to my ex- 
cited nerves it seemed that he smiled 
ominously, as he answered me in a pecul- 
iar Yankee drawl : ‘ I guess, stranger, as 
I ain’t the man to want to turn a dogs 
stomach against his dinner, more especial 
when there ain’t no more going- of the 
rounds; as for that there claim, well, she’s 
been a good nigger to me ; but, between 
you and me, stranger, speaking man to 
man now that there ain’t any filthy lucre 
between us to obsculate the features of 
the truth, I guess she’s about worked 
out ! ’ 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


15 


“ I gasped; the fellow’s effrontery took 
the breath out of me. Only five minutes 
before he had been swearing by all his 
gods, — and they appeared to be numerous 
and mixed, — that there were half a dozen 
fortunes left in the claim, and that he 
was 'only giving it up because he was 
downright weary of shovelling the gold 
out. 

“ ‘ Don’t look so vexed, stranger,’ went 
on my tormentor, ‘ perhaps there is some 
shine in the old girl yet; anyway, you are 
a downright good fellow, you are, there- 
fore you will, I guess, have a real A 1, 
plate-glass opportunity of working on the 
feelings of Dame Fortune. Anyway, it 
will bring the muscle up upon your arm 
if the stuff is uncommon stiff, and, what, 
is more, you will in the course of a year 
earn a sight more than two thousand dol- 
lars in value of experience/ 


1 6 ALLAN THE HUNTER. 

“ And he went, just in time, for in 
another minute I should have gone for 
him, and I saw his face no more. 

“Well, I set to work on the old claim 
with my boy Harry and a half a dozen 
Kafirs to help me, which, seeing that 
I had put nearly all my worldly wealth 
into it, was the least I could do. And' 
we worked, my word, we did work, — early 
and late we went at it, — but never a bit 
of gold did we see; no, not even a nugget 
large enough to make a scarf-pin out of. 
The American gentleman had mopped up 
the whole lot and left us the sweepings. 

“ For three months this game went on, 
till at last I had paid away all, or very 
near all, that was left of our little capital 
in wages and food for the Kafirs and our- 
selves. When I tell you that Boer meal 
was sometimes as high as four pounds 
a bag, you will understand that it did not 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


17 


take long to run through our banking 
account. 

'‘At last the crisis came. One Saturday 
night I had paid the men as usual, and 
bought a muid of mealie meal at sixty 
shillings for them to fill themselves with; 
and then I went, with my boy Harry, and 
sat on the edge of the thundering great 
hole that we had dug in the hillside, and 
which we had in bitter mockery named 
Eldorado. There we sat in the moonlight, 
with our feet hanging over the edge of 
the claim, and were melancholy enough 
for anything. Presently I pulled out my 
purse and emptied its contents into my 
hand. There was a half sovereign, two 
florins, ninepence in silver, no coppers, 
for copper practically does not circulate 
in South Africa, which is one of the 
things that makes living so dear there, 
— in all exactly fourteen and ninepence. 


1 8 ALLAN THE HUNTER. 

“ ‘ There, Harry, my boy ! ’ I said, ‘ that 
is the sum total of our worldly wealth ; 
the infernal hole has swallowed all the 
rest.’ 

“ ‘ Gracious ! ’ said Master Harry. ‘ I 
say, father, you and I shall have to let 
ourselves out to work with the Kafirs 
and live on mealie pap,’ and he giggled 
at his unpleasant little joke. 

“ But I was in no mood for joking, for 
it is not a merry thing to dig like mad 
for months, and be completely ruined in 
the process, especially if you happen to 
hate digging like poison, and conse- 
quently I resented Harry’s light-heart- 
edness. 

“ ‘ Shut up ! ’ I said, raising my hand as 
though to give him a cuff, with the result 
ihat the half sovereign slipped out of it 
and fell into the gulf below. 

“‘Oh, confound it all,’ said I, ‘it’s gone.’ 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


19 


“ ‘ There, dad,’ said Harry, ‘ that’s what 
comes of letting your angry passions rise; 
now we are down to four and nine.’ 

“ I made no answer to these words of 
wisdom, but scrambled down the steep 
sides of the claim, followed by Harry, to 
hunt for my little all. Well, we hunted 
and we hunted, but the moonlight is an 
uncertain thing to look for half sovereigns 
by, and there was some loose soil about, 
for the Kafirs had knocked off working at 
the very spot a couple of hours before. 
I took a pick and raked away the clods of 
earth with it, in the hope of finding the 
coin ; but all in vain. At last, in sheer 
annoyance, I struck the sharp end of the 
pickaxe down into the soil, which was of 
a very hard nature. To my astonishment, 
it sunk in right up to the haft. 

“ ‘ Why, Harry,’ I said, ‘ this ground 
must have beeri disturbed ! ’ 


20 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


“ ‘ I don’t think so, father/ he answered, 
4 but we will soon see/ and he began to 
shovel out the soil with his hands. ‘ Oh/ 
he said, presently, ‘ it’s only some old 
stones ; the pick has gone down between 
them, look ; ’ and he began to pull at one 
of the stones. 

“ ‘ I say, dad/ he said, presently, almost 
in a whisper, ‘ its precious heavy, feel it ; * 
and he rose and gave me a round, brown- 
ish lump about the size of a very large 
apple, which he was holding in both his 
hands. I took it curiously and held it up 
to the light. It was precious heavy. The 
moonlight fell upon its rough and dirt- 
encrusted surface, and, as I looked, curi- 
ous little thrills of excitement began to 
pass through me. But I could not be 
sure. 

“ 4 Give me your knife, Harry/ I said. 

“ He did so, and, resting the brown 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


21 


stone on my knee, I scratched at its sur- 
face. Great heavens, it was soft ! 

“ Another second, and the secret was 
out ; we had found a great nugget of 
pure gold — four pounds of it or more. 
‘ It’s gold, lad,’ I said, ‘ its gold, or I’m 
a Dutchman.’ 

“ Harry, with his eyes starting out of 
his head, glared down at the long, gleam- 
ing yellow scratch that I had made upon 
the virgin metal, and then burst out into 
yell upon yell of exultation, that went 
ringing away across the silent claims like 
the shrieks of somebody being murdered. 

“ ‘ Shut up, shut up ! ’ I said, ‘ do you 
want every thief on the fields after 
you ? ’ 

“ Scarcely were the words out of my 
mouth, when I heard a stealthy footstep 
approaching. I promptly put the big nug- 
get down and sat on it, as though it had 


22 


ALLAN THE HUNTER . 


been an egg, — and uncommonly hard it 
was, — and as I did so I saw a lean, dark 
face poked over the edge of the claim, and 
a pair of beady eyes searching us out. 
I knew the face ; it belonged to a man of 
very bad character, known as Handspike 
Tom, — having, I understood, been so 
named at the Diamond Fields because he 
had murdered his mate with a handspike. 
He was now no doubt prowling about 
like a human hyena to see what he could 
steal. 

“‘Is that you, ’unter Quatermain?’ he 
says. 

“‘Yes, that’s me, Mr. Tom,’ I answered, 
politely. 

“ ‘ And what might all that there yelling 
be?’ he asked. ‘I was walking along, 
a-taking of the evening air and a-thinking 
about my soul, when I ears ’owl after 
’owl.’ 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS . 


23 


“‘Well, Mr. Tom,’ I answered, 'that is 
not to be wondered at, seeing that, like 
yourself, they are nocturnal birds/ 

“ ‘ ’Owl after ’owl ! ’ he repeated, sternly, 
taking no notice of my interpretation, 
‘ and I stops and smacks my lips and 
says, “ That’s murder,” and I listens again 
and thinks, "No, it ain’t; that ’owl is the 
’owl of hexultation ; some one’s been and 
got his fingers into a gummy yeller pot, 
I’ll swear, and gone off ’is ’ead in the suck- 
ing of them.” Now, ’unter Quatermain, is 
I right ? is it nuggets ? Oh, lor ! ’ — and he 
smacked his lips audibly — ‘great big yel- 
low boys, — is it them that you have just 
been and tumbled across?’ 

‘“No,’ I said, boldly, ‘it isn’t,’ — the 
cruel gleam in his black eyes altogether 
overcoming my aversion to the lie; for 
I knew that if once he found out what it 
was that I was sitting on,— and, by the 


24 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


way, I have heard of rolling in gold being 
spoken of as a pleasant process, but I 
certainly do not recommend anybody who 
values comfort to try sitting on it, — I 
should run a very good chance of being 
handspiked before the night Was over. 

“ ‘ If you want to know what it was, 
Mr. Tom,’ I went on, with my politest air, 
although in agony from the nugget un- 
derneath, — for I hold it always best to be 
polite to a man who is so handy with a 
handspike, — ‘ my boy and I have had 
a slight difference of opinion, and I was 
enforcing my view of the matter upon 
him; that’s all, Mr. Tom.’ 

“‘Yes, Mr. Tom,’ put in Harry, begin- 
ning to snivel. 

“‘Well, all I can say is that a played- 
out old claim is a wonderful queer sort 
of place to come to for to argify at ten 
o’clock of night, and what’s more, my 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


25 


sweet youth, if ever I should ’ave the argi- 
fying of yer,’ — and he leered unpleasantlv 
at Harry, — ‘yer won’t oiler in quite such 
a jolly sort o’ way. And now I’ll be say- 
ing good-night, for I don’t like disturbing 
of a family party. No, I ain’t that sort of 
man, I ain’t. Good-night to yer,’ unter 
Quatermain, — good-night to yer, my argi- 
fied young one;’ and Mr. Tom turned 
away, disappointed, and prowled off else- 
where, like a human jackal, to see what 
he could thieve or kill. 

“ ‘ Thank heaven ! ’ I said, as I slipped 
off the lump of gold, which left a dint 
upon my person that did not wear out 
for a week or more. ‘ Now, then, just 
you slip up, Harry, and see if that con- 
summate villain has gone.’ Harry did 
so, and reported that he had vanished 
towards Pilgrims’ Rest; and then we set 
to work, and very carefully, but trembling 


26 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


with excitement, with our hands hollowed 
out all the space of ground into which I 
had struck the pick. Yes, as I thought, 
there was a regular nest of nuggets, 
twelve in all, running from the size of a 
hazel nut to that of a hens egg, though 
of course the first one was much larger 
than that. How they all came there no- 
body can say ; it was one of those extraor- 
dinary freaks, with stories of which, at 
any rate, all people acquainted with allu- 
vial gold-mining will be familiar. It 
turned out afterwards that the Yankee 
who sold me the claim had, in the same 
way, made his pile — a much larger one 
than ours, by the way — out of a single 
pocket, and then worked for six months 
without seeing color, after which he gave 
it up. 

“ At any rate, there the nuggets were, 
to the value, as it turned out afterwards, 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


27 


of about twelve hundred and fifty pounds, 
so that, after all, I took out of that hole 
four hundred and fifty pounds more than 
I put into it. We got them all out and 
wrapped them in a handkerchief, and then, 
fearing to carry home so much treasure, 
especially as we knew that Mr. Hand- 
spike Tom was on the prowl, made up 
our minds 'to pass the night where we 
were, — a necessity which, disagreeable 
as it was, was wonderfully sweetened by 
the presence of that handkerchief full of 
virgin gold, which represented the interest 
of my lost half-sovereign. 

“ Slowly the night wore away, for, with 
the fear of Handspike Tom before my 
eyes, I did not dare to go to sleep, and 
at last the dawn came, blushing like a 
bride, down the sombre ways of night. 
I got up and watched its perfect growth, 
till it opened like a vast celestial flower 


28 


ALLAN THE HUNTER . 


upon the eastern sky, and the sunbeams 
began to spring in splendor from moun- 
tain-top to mountain-top. I watched it, 
and, as I did so, it flashed upon me with 
a complete conviction, that I had not felt 
before, that I had had enough of gold- 
mining to last me the rest of my natural 
life; and I then and there made up my 
mind to clear out of Pilgrims’ Rest and 
go and shoot buffalo towards Delagoa 
Bay. Then I turned, took the pick and 
shovel, and, although it was a Sunday 
morning, woke up Harry and set to work 
to see if there were any more nuggets 
handy. As I expected, there were none. 
What we had got had lain together in 
a little pocket filled with soil that felt 
quite different from the stiff stuff round 
and outside the pocket. There was not 
a trace of gold. Of course, it is possible 
that there were other pockets full some- 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


29 


where about, but all I have to say is I 
made up my mind that, whoever found 
them, I should not ; and, as a matter of 
fact, I have since heard that that claim 
has been the ruin of two or three people, 
as it very nearly was the ruin of me. 

“‘Harry,’ I said, presently, ‘I am going 
away this week towards Delagoa to shoot 
buffalo. Shall I take you with me, or 
send you down to Durban ? ’ 

“ ‘ Oh, take me with you, dad,’ begged 
Harry, ‘ I want to kill a buffalo ! ’ 

“ ‘ And supposing that the buffalo kills 
you, instead ? ’ I asked. 

Oh, never mind,’ he says, gaily, ‘there 
are lots more where I came from.’ 

“ I rebuked him for his flippancy, but 
in the end I- consented to take him. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE FATE OF JIM-JIM. 

“ Something over a fortnight had passed 
since the night when I lost half a sover- 
eign and found , twelve hundred and fifty 
pounds in looking for it, and, instead of 
that horrid hole, for which, after all, Eldo- 
rado was scarcely a misnomer, a very dif- 
ferent scene stretched away before us clad 
in the silver robe of the moonlight. We 
were camped — Harry and I, two Kafirs, 
a Scotch cart, and six oxen — on the 
swelling side of a great wave of bush- 
clad land. Just where we had made our 
camp, however, the bush was very sparse, 
and only grew about in clumps, while 
here and there were single, flat -topped 
mimosa-trees. To our right, a little stream, 


30 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


3 1 


which had cut a deep channel for itself 
in the bosom of the slope, flowed musi- 
cally on between banks green with maid- 
enhair, wild asparagus, and many beautiful 
grasses. The bed-rock here was- red gran- 
ite, and, in the course of many centuries 
of patient washing, the water had hol- 
lowed out some of the huge slabs in its 
path into great troughs and cups, and 
these we used for bathing-places. No 
Roman lady, with her baths of porphyry 
or alabaster, could have had a more deli- 
cious spot to lave herself than we had 
within fifty yards of our skerm, or rough 
enclosure of mimosa-thorn that we had 
dragged together round the cart to protect 
us from the attacks of lions, of which 
there were several about, as I knew from 
their spoor, though we had neither heard 
nor seen them. 

“ It was a little nook where the eddy 


32 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


of the stream had washed away a mass 
of soil, and on the edge of it there grew 
a most beautiful old mimosa-thorn. Be- 
neath the thorn was a large, smooth slab 
of granite, fringed all round with maiden- 
hair and other ferns, that sloped gently 
down to a pool of the clearest sparkling 
water, which lay in a bowl of granite 
about ten feet wide by five deep in the 
centre. Here to this slab we went every 
morning to bathe, and that delightful bath 
is among the most pleasant of my hunt- 
ing reminiscences, as it is also, for reasons 
that will presently appear, among the most 
painful. 

“It was a lovely night, and Harry and 
I sat there to the windward of the fire, 
at which the two Kafirs were busily em- 
ployed in cooking some impala steaks 
off a buck, which Harry, to his great joy, 
had shot that morning, and were as per- 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


33 


fectly contented with ourselves and the 
world at large as two people could possi- 
bly be. The night was beautiful, and it 
would require somebody with more words 
on the tip of his tongue than I have, to 
describe the chastened majesty of the 
moonlit wilds. Away, forever and for- 
ever, away to the mysterious north, rolled 
the great, bush ocean, over which the si- 
lence hung like a heavy cloud. There, 
beneath us, a mile or more to the right, 
rolled the wide Oliphant River, and, mir- 
ror-like, flashed back the moon, whose 
silver spears were shivered on its breast, 
and then tossed, in twisted lines of light, 
far and wide about the mountains and 
the plain. Down upon its banks grew 
great timber-trees, that through the stilly 
silence pointed solemnly to heaven, and 
the beauty of the night lay upon them 
like a dream. 


34 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


“Everywhere was silence, — silence in 
the starred depths, silence in the fair 
bosom of the sleeping earth. Now, if 
ever, great thoughts might rise in a mans 
mind, and for a space he might lose his 
littleness in the sense that he partook of 
the pure immensity about him. Almost 
might he hear the echoes of angelic voices, 
as the spirits, poised on bent and rushing 
pinions, swept onward from universe to 
universe ; and distinguish the white fin- 
gers of the wind playing in the tresses of 
the trees. 

“Hark! what was that? 

“ From far away, down by the river, 
there comes a mighty rolling sound, then 
another, and another. It is the lion seek- 
ing his meat. 

“ I saw Harry shiver, and turn a little 
pale. He was a plucky boy enough, but 
the roar of a lion for the first time in the 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


35 


solemn bush-veld at night is apt to shake 
the nerves of any lad. 

“ 4 Lions, my boy/ I said ; 4 they are 
hunting down by the river there ; but 
I don’t think that you need make your- 
self uneasy. We have been here three 
nights now, and if they were going to pay 
us a visit I should think that they would 
have done so before this. However, we 
will make up the fire/ 

'“Here, Pharaoh, do you and Jim-Jim 
get some more wood before we go to 
sleep, else the cats will be purring round 
you before morning/ 

44 Pharaoh, a great, brawny Swazi, who 
had been working for me at Pilgrims’ 
Rest, laughed, rose, and stretched him- 
self, and then, calling to Jim-Jim to bring 
the axe and a riem, started off in the 
moonlight towards a clump of sugar-bush, 
where we cut our fuel from some dead 


36 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


trees. He was a fine fellow in his way, 
was Pharaoh, and I think that he had 
been named Pharaoh because he had an 
Egyptian cast of countenance and a royal 
sort of swagger about him. But his way 
was a somewhat peculiar way, on account 
of the uncertainty of his temper, and very 
few people could get on with him ; also, 
if he could get it, he would drink like a 
fish, and when he drank he became shock- 
ingly bloodthirsty. These were his bad 
points ; his good ones were that, like most 
people of the Zulu blood, he became ex- 
ceedingly attached to you, if he took to 
you at all ; he was a hard-working and 
intelligent man, and about as dare-devil 
and plucky a fellow, at a pinch, as I have 
ever had to do with. He was about five 
and thirty years of age or so, but not 
a ‘ keshla,’ or ringed man. I believe that 
he got into trouble in some way in Swazi- 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


37 


land, and the authorities of his tribe would 
not allow him to assume the ring, and that 
is why he came to work at the gold-fields. 
The other man, or rather lad, Jim-Jim, 
was a Mapoch Kafir, or Knobnose, and, 
even in the light of subsequent events, 
I fear that I cannot speak very well of 
him. He was an idle and careless young 
rascal, and only that very morning I had 
to tell Pharaoh to whip him for letting 
the oxen stray, which he did with the 
greatest gusto, although he was by way 
of being very fond of Jim-Jim f and I saw 
him consoling him afterwards with a 
pinch of snuff from his own ear-box, 
whilst he explained to him that the next 
time it came in the way of duty to flog 
him, he meant to thrash him with the 
other hand, so as to cross the old cuts, 
and make a ‘ pretty pattern ’ on his back. 

“Well, off they went, though Jim-Jim 


38 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


did not at all like leaving the camp at 
that hour, even though the moonlight 
was so bright, and, in due course, re- 
turned safely enough, with a great bundle 
of wood. I laughed at Jim-Jim, and asked 
him if he had seen anything, and he said, 
yes, he had; he had seen two large, yellow 
eyes staring at him from behind a bush, 
and heard something snore. 

“As, however, on further investigation 
the yellow eyes and the snore appeared 
to have existed only in Jim- Jim’s lively 
imagination, I was not greatly disturbed 
by this alarming report ; but, having seen 
to the making up of the fire, got into 
the skerm and went quietly to sleep, with 
Harry by my side. 

“ Some hours afterwards I woke up 
with a start. I don’t know what woke 
me. The moon had gone down, or, at 
least, was almost hidden beneath the soft 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


39 


horizon of bush, only her red rim being 
visible. Also a wind had sprung up, and 
was driving long, hurrying lines of cloud 
across the starry sky, and, altogether, a 
great change had come over the mood 
of the night. By the look of the sky, 
I judged that we must be about two 
hours from* daybreak. 

“ The oxen, which were, as usual, tied 
to the disselboom of the Scotch cart, were 
very restless, — they kept snuffing and 
blowing, and rising up and lying down 
again, — and I at once suspected that they 
must wind something. Presently I knew 
what it was that they winded, for within 
fifty yards of us a lion roared, not very 
loud, but quite loud enough to make my 
heart come into my mouth. 

“ Pharaoh was sleeping on the other 
side of the cart, and beneath it I saw him 
raise his head and listen. 


40 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


“ ‘ Lion, Inkoos,’ he whispered, ‘ lion.’ 

“Jim-Jim also jumped up, and by the 
faint light I could see that he was in a 
very great fright indeed. 

“ Thinking that it was as well to be 
prepared for emergencies, I told Pharaoh 
to throw wood upon the fire, and woke 
up Harry, who, I verily believe, was capa- 
ble of sleeping happily through the crack 
of doom. He was a little scared at first, 
but presently the excitement of the posi- 
tion came home to him, and he became 
quite anxious to see his majesty face to 
face. I got my rifle handy and gave Harry 
his, — a Westley Richards falling block, 
which is a very useful gun for a youth, 
being light and yet a good killing rifle, 
— and then we waited. 

“ For a long time nothing happened, 
and I began to think that the best thing 
that we could do would be to go to sleep 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS . 


41 


again, when, suddenly, I heard a sound, 
more like a cough than a roar, within 
about twenty yards of the skerm. We 
all looked out, but could see nothing ; 
and then followed another period of sus- 
pense. It was very trying to the nerves, 
this waiting for an attack that might be 
developed from any quarter, or might not 
be developed at all ; and, though I was 
a very old hand at this sort of business, 
I was anxious about Harry, for it is 
wonderful how the presence of anybody 
to whom one is attached unnerves a man 
in moments of danger, and that made me 
nervous. I know, although it was now 
chilly enough, I could feel the perspira- 
tion running down my nose, and, in order 
to relieve the strain on my attention, em- 
ployed myself in watching a beetle which 
appeared to be attracted by the fire- 
light, and was sitting before it, thought- 


42 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


fully rubbing his antennae against each 
other. 

“Suddenly, the beetle gave such a jump 
that he nearly pitched headlong into the 
fire, and so did we all, — gave jumps, I 
mean; and no wonder, for from right 
under the skerm fence there came a most 
frightful roar, — a roar that literally made 
the Scotch cart shake, and took the breath 
out of you. 

“ Harry ejaculated, and turned rather 
green, Jim -Jim howled outright, while 
the poor oxen, who were terrified almost 
out of their hides, stood and shivered, and 
lowed piteously. 

“The night was almost entirely dark 
now, for the moon had quite set, and the 
clouds had covered up the stars, so that 
the only light that we had was from the 
fire, which was burning up brightly now ; 
but, as you know, firelight is absolutely 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


43 


useless to shoot by, it is so uncertain, 
and, besides, it penetrates but a very little 
way into the darkness, although, if one is 
in the dark, outside, one can see it from so 
far away. 

“ Presently, the oxen, after standing still 
for a moment, suddenly winded the lion, 
and did what I feared they would do, — 
began to ‘ skrek,’ that is, to try and break 
loose from the trek-tow to which they were 
tied, and rush off madly into the wilder- 
ness. Lions know of this habit on the 
part of oxen, — which are, I do believe, 
the most foolish animals under the sun, a 
sheep being a very Solomon compared 
to them ; and it is by no means uncom- 
mon for a lion to get in such a position 
that a herd or span of oxen may wind 
him, skrek, break their reins, and rush 
off into the bush. Of course, once they 
are there, they are helpless in the dark ; 


44 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


and then the lion chooses the one that he 
loves best, and eats him at his leisure. 

“ Well, round and round went our six 
poor oxen, nearly trampling us to death 
in their mad rush ; indeed, had we not 
hastily tumbled out of the way, we should 
have been trampled to death, or, at the 
least, seriously injured. As it was, Harry 
was run over, and poor Jim -Jim, being 
caught by the trek-tow somewhere beneath 
the arm, was hurled right across the skerm, 
landing by my side, only some paces off. 

“ Snap went the disselboom of the cart 
beneath the transverse strain put upon it. 
Had it not broken, the cart would have 
overset ; as it was, in another minute, 
oxen, cart, trek-tow, reins, broken dissel- 
boom, and everything, were soon tied in 
one vast heaving, plunging, bellowing, 
and seemingly inextricable knot. 

“ For a moment or two this state of 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


45 


affairs took my attention off from the 
lion that had caused it, but whilst I was 
wondering what on earth was to be done 
next, and what we should do if the cattle 
broke loose into the bush and were lost, — 
for cattle, frightened in this manner, will go 
right away like mad things, — it was sud- 
denly recalled, in a very painful fashion. 

“ For at that moment I perceived, by 
the light of the fire, a kind of gleam of yel- 
low, travelling through the air towards us. 

“ ‘ The lion ! the lion ! ’ holloaed Pha- 
raoh, and, as he did so, he, or rather she, - — 
for it was a great, gaunt lioness, half wild, 
no doubt, with hunger, — lit right in the 
middle of the skerm, and stood there in 
the smoky gloom, and lashed her tail and 
roared. I seized my rifle, and fired it at 
her, but what between the confusion, and 
my agitation, and the uncertain light, I 
missed her, and nearly shot Pharaoh. The 


46 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


flash of the rifle, however, threw the whole 
scene into strong relief, and a wild one it 
was, I can tell you, — with the seething 
mass of oxen twisted all round the cart, 
in such a fashion that their heads looked 
as though they were growing out of their 
rumps, and their horns seemed to protrude 
from their backs ; the smoking fire with 
just a blaze in the heart of the smoke; 
Jim -Jim in the foreground, where the 
oxen had thrown him in their wild rush, 
stretched out there in terror; and then, 
as a centre to the picture, the great, gaunt 
lioness glaring round, with hungry, yellow 
eyes, and roaring and whining as she made 
up her mind what to do. 

“ It did not take her long, just the time 
that it takes a flash to die into darkness, 
and then, before I could fire again, or do 
anything, with a most fiendish snort she 
sprang upon poor Jim-Jim. 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


47 


“ I heard the unfortunate lad shriek, 
and then, almost instantly, I saw his legs 
thrown into the air. The lioness had 
seized him by the neck, and, with a sud- 
den jerk, thrown his body over her back, 
so that his legs hung down upon the fur- 
ther side. 1 Then, without the slightest 
hesitation, and apparently without any 
difficulty, she cleared the skerm fence at 
u single bound, and, bearing poor Jim-Jim 
with her, vanished into the darkness be- 
yond, in the direction of the bathing-place 
that I have already described. We jumped 
up, perfectly mad with horror and fear, 
and rushed wildly after her, firing shots at 
haphazard, on the chance that she would 
be frightened by them into dropping her 
prey ; but nothing could we see, and noth- 


1 I have known a lion to carry a two-year-old ox over a stone 
wall four feet high in this fashion, and a mile away into the bush 
beyond. 


48 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


ing could we hear. The lioness had 
vanished into the darkness, taking Jim- 
Jim with her, and to attempt to follow 
her till daylight was madness. We should 
only expose ourselves to the risk of a like 
fate. 

“ So, with scared and heavy hearts, we 
crept back to the skerm, and sat down to 
wait for daylight, which now could not 
be much more than an hour off. It was 
absolutely useless to try even to disen- 
tangle the oxen till then, so all that was 
left for us to do was to sit and wonder 
how it came to pass that the one should 
be taken and the other left, and to hope 
against hope that our poor servant might 
have been mercifully delivered from the 
lion’s jaws. At length the faint light 
came stealing like a ghost up the long 
slope of bush, and glinted on the tangled 
oxen’s horns; and, with white and fright- 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


49 


ened faces, we got up, and set to the task 
of disentangling the oxen, till such time 
as there should be light enough to enable 
us to follow the trail of the lioness which 
had gone off with Jim- Jim. And here 
a fresh trouble awaited us, for when, at 
lasjt, with infinite difficulty, we had got 
the great, helpless brutes loose, it was 
only to find that one of the best of them 
was very sick. There was no mistake 
about the way he stood with his legs 
slightly apart and his head hanging down. 
He had got the redwater, — I was sure of 
it. Of all the difficulties connected with 
life and travelling in South Africa, those 
connected with oxen are, perhaps, the 
worst. The ox is the most exasperating 
animal in the world. He has absolutely 
no constitution, and never neglects an 
opportunity of falling sick of some mys- 
terious disease. He will get thin upon 


50 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


the slightest provocation, and from mere 
maliciousness die of ‘ poverty ’ ; whereas 
it is his chief delight to turn round and 
refuse to pull whenever he finds himself 
well in the centre of a river, or the wagon- 
wheel nicely fast in a mud-hole. Drive 
him a few miles over rough roads, and 
you will find that he is footsore ; turn 
him loose to feed, and you will find that 
he has run away, or, if he has not run 
away, he has, of malice aforethought, eaten 
‘ tulip,’ and poisoned himself. There is 
always something wrong with him. The 
ox is a brute. It was just like his accus- 
tomed behavior for the one in question 
to break out — on purpose, probably — 
with redwater, just when a lion had 
walked off with his herd. It was ex- 
actly what I should have expected, and 
I was, therefore, neither disappointed nor 
surprised. 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 51 

“ Well, it was no use crying, as I should 
almost have liked to do; because, if this 
. ox had redwater, it was probable that the 
rest of them had it, too, although they had 
been sold to me as ‘ salted,’ that is, proof 
against such diseases as redwater and 
lung-sick. One gets hardened to this sort 
of thing in South Africa in course of time, 
for I suppose in no other country in the 
world is the waste of animal -life so 
great. 

“ So, taking my rifle, and telling Harry 
to follow me (for we had to leave Pharaoh 
to look after the oxen, — Pharaoh’s lean 
kine, I called them), I started to see if 
anything could be found of, or appertain- 
ing to, the unfortunate Jim -Jim. The 
ground round our little camp was hard 
and rocky, and we could not hit off any 
spoor of the lioness, though just outside 
the skerm we saw a drop or two of blood. 


52 


ALLAN THE HUNTER . 


About three hundred yards from the camp, 
and a little to the right, was a patch of 
sugar -bush mixed up with the usual 
mimosa, and for this I made, thinking 
that the lioness would have- been sure 
to take her prey there to devour it. On 
we pushed through the long grass, that 
was bent down beneath the weight of 
the soaking dew. In two minutes we 
were wet through up to the thighs, as wet 
as though we had waded through water. 
In due course, however, we reached the 
patch of bush, and in the gray light of 
the morning cautiously and slowly pushed 
our way into it. It was very dark under 
the trees, for the sun was not yet up, so 
we progressed with the most extreme care, 
half expecting every minute to come across 
the lioness licking the bones of poor Jim- 
Jim. But no lioness could we see, and as 
for Jim-Jim, there was not the least trace 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 53 

of him to be found. Evidently, they had 
not come there. 

“ So, pushing through the bush, we 
proceeded to hunt every other likely spot 
about, with the same result. 

“‘I suppose she must have taken him 
right away,’ I said at last, sadly enough. 
‘ At any rate he will be dead by now*; so 
God have mercy on him, we can’t help 
him. What’s to be done now ? ’ 

“ ‘ I suppose that we had better wash 
ourselves in the pool, and then go back 
and get something to eat.’ 

“ So we went down to the beautiful 
spot that I have described, to wash. I 
was the first to reach it, which I did by 
scrambling down the ferny bank. Then 
I turned round, and started back with a 
yell, as well I might, for almost beneath 
my feet there came a most awful snarl. 

“ I had lit down almost upon the back 


54 


ALLAN THE HUNTER . 


of the lioness, who had been sleeping on 
the slab where we stood to dry ourselves 
after bathing. With a snarl and a growl, 
before I could do anything, — before I 
could even cock my rifle, — she had 
bounded right across the crystal pool, and 
vanished over the opposite bank. It was 
all done in an instant, as quick as thought. 

“ She had been sleeping on the slab, 
and — oh, horror! what was that sleeping 
beside her? It was the torn remnant of 
poor Jim-Jim, lying on a patch of blood- 
stained rock. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE LION -DUEL. 

“Poor Jim-Jim! We buried what was 
left of him, which was not very much, in 
an old bread-bag, and though, whilst he 
lived, his virtues were not great, now that 
he was gone we could have wept over 
him. Indeed, Harry did weep outright; 
while I registered a quiet little vow on 
my own account that I would let daylight 
into that lioness before I was forty-eight 
hours older, if by any means it could be 
done. 

“Well, we buried him, and there he lies, 
where lions will not trouble him any more. 
So there is an end of the book of Jim-Jim. 

“ The question that now remained was, 


55 


56 ALLAN THE HUNTER. 

how to circumvent his murderess. I knew 
that she would be sure to return as soon 
as she was hungry again, but I did not 
know when she would be hungry. She 
had left so little of Jim -Jim behind her 
that I should scarcely expect to see her 
the next night, unless, indeed, she had 
cubs. Still, I felt that it would not be 
wise to miss the chance of her coming, 
so we set about to make preparations for 
her reception. The first thing that we 
did was to strengthen the bush wall of 
the skerm, by dragging a large quantity 
of the tops of thorn-trees together, and 
laying them, one on the other, in such a 
fashion that the thorns pointed outwards. 
This, after our experience of the fate of 
Jim-Jim, seemed a very necessary precau- 
tion, since, if where one sheep can jump 
another can follow, as the Kafirs say, 
how much more is this the case where 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


57 


an animal so active and so vigorous as 
the lion is concerned ! And now came 
the further question, how were we to 
beguile the lioness to return ? Lions are 
animals that have a strange knack of 
appearing when they are not wanted, and 
keeping studiously out of the way when 
their presence is required. 

“ Harry, who, as I have said, was an 
eminently practical boy, suggested to Pha- 
raoh that he should go and sit outside the 
skerm in the moonlight, as a sort of bait, 
assuring him that he would have nothing 
to fear, as we should certainly kill the 
lioness before she killed him. Pharaoh, 
however, strangely enough, did not seem 
to take to this suggestion. Indeed, he 
walked away, much put out with Harry 
for having made it. 

“ It gave me an idea, however. 

“‘Well!’ I said, ‘there is that ox. He 


58 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


must die sooner or later, so we may as 
well utilize him.’ 

“ Now, about thirty yards to the left of 
our skerm, if one stood facing down the 
hill towards the river, was the stump of 
a tree that had been destroyed by light- 
ning many years before, standing equi- 
distantly between, but a little in front of, 
two clumps of bush, which were severally 
some fifteen paces from it. 

“ Here was the very place to tie the ox; 
and, accordingly, a little before sunset, the 
poor animal was led forth by Pharaoh, and 
made fast there, little knowing, poor brute, 
for what purpose ; and we commenced our 
long vigil, this time without a fire, for our 
object was to attract the lioness, and not 
to scare her. 

“ For hour after hour we waited, keep- 
ing ourselves awake by pinching each 
other, — it is, by the way, remarkable 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


59 


what a difference in the force of pinches 
requisite to the occasion exists in the 
mind of pincher and pinchee, — but no 
lioness came. The moon waxed, and the 
moon waned, and then, at last, the moon 
went down, and darkness swallowed up 
the world, but no lion came to swallow 
us up. We waited till dawn, because we 
did not dare to go to sleep, and then, at 
last, we took such rest as we could get. 

“ That morning we went out shooting, 
not because we wanted to, for we were too 
depressed and tired, but because we had 
no more meat. For three hours or more 
we wandered about, in a broiling sun, look- 
ing for something to kill, but with abso- 
lutely no results. For some unknown 
reason the game had grown very scarce 
about the spot, though when I was there 
two years before every sort of large game, 
except rhinoceros and elephant, was par- 


6o 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


ticularly abundant. The lions, of whom 
there were many, alone remained, and 
I fancy that it was the fact of the game 
they live on having temporarily migrated 
that made them so daring and ferocious. 
As a general rule a lion is an amiable 
animal enough, if he is left alone, but 
a hungry lion is almost as dangerous 
as a hungry man. One hears a great 
many different opinions expressed as to 
whether or no the lion is remarkable for 
his courage, but the result of my experi- 
ence is, that very much depends upon the 
state of his stomach. A hungry lion will 
not stick at a trifle, whereas a full one 
will flee at a very small rebuke. 

“Well, we hunted all about, and nothing 
could we see, not even a duck or a bush- 
buck ; and, at last, thoroughly tired and 
out of temper, we started on our way back 
to camp, passing over the brow of a steep- 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 6 1 

ish hill to do so. Just as we got over the 
ridge I froze up like a pointer dog, for 
there, about six hundred yards to my left, 
his beautiful curved horns outlined against 
the soft blue of the sky, I saw a noble 
koodoo bull ( Strepsiceros kudu). Even 
at that distance, for, as you know, my 
eyes are very keen, I could distinctly 
see the white stripes upon its side when 
the light fell upon it, and its large and 
pointed ears twitch as the flies worried 
it. 

“ So far so good ; but how were we 
to get at it? It was ridiculous to risk 
a shot at that great distance, and yet 
both the ground and the wind lay very 
ill ' for stalking. It seemed to me that 
the only chance would be to make a de- 
tour of at least a mile or more, and come 
up on the other side of the koodoo. I 
called Harry to my side, and explained 


62 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


to him what I thought would be our best 
course, when, suddenly, without any delay, 
the koodoo saved us any further trouble 
by suddenly starting off down the hill like 
a leaping rocket. I don’t know what had 
frightened it; certainly we had not. Per- 
haps a hyena or a leopard — a tiger as 
we call it there — had suddenly appeared ; 
at any rate, off it went, running slightly 
towards us, and I never saw a buck go 
faster. As for Harry, he stood watching 
the beautiful animals course. Presently 
it vanished behind a patch of bush, to 
emerge a few seconds later about five 
hundred paces from us, on a stretch of 
comparatively level ground that was 
strewn with boulders. On it went, tak- 
ing the boulders in its path in a succes- 
sion of great bounds that were beautiful 
to behold. As it did so, I happened to 
look round at Harry, and perceived, to 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 63 

my astonishment, that he had got his 
rifle to his shoulder. 

“‘You foolish boy!’ I ejaculated, ‘surely 
you are not going to’ — and, just at that 
moment, the rifle went off. 

“ And then I think I saw what was, in 
its way, one of the most wonderful things 
I ever remember in my hunting experi- 
ence. The koodoo was at that moment 
in the air, clearing a pile of stones, with 
its forelegs tucked underneath it. All in 
an instant the legs stretched themselves 
out, in a spasmodic fashion, and it lit on 
them, and they doubled up beneath it. 
Down went the noble buck, down on to 
its head. For a moment it seemed to be 
standing on its horns, its hind-legs high 
in the air, and then over it went, and lay 
still. 

“ ‘ Great heavens ! ’ I said, ‘ why, you’ve 
hit him ! He’s dead.’ 


64 


ALLAN THE HUNTER . 


“ As for Harry, he said nothing, but 
merely looked scared, as well he might. 
A man, let alone a boy, might have fired 
a thousand such shots without ever touch- 
ing the object, which, mind you, was 
springing and bounding over rocks quite 
five hundred yards away; and here this 
lad — taking a snap shot, and merely al- 
lowing for elevation by instinct, for he did 
not put up his sights — had knocked the 
bull over as dead as a door-nail. Well, 
I made no further remark, — the occasion 
was too solemn for talking, — but merely 
led the way to where the koodoo lay. 
There he was, beautiful and quite still ; 
and there, high up, about half-way down 
his neck, was a neat round hole. The 
bullet had severed the spinal marrow, 
passing right through the vertebrae, and 
away on the other side. 

“ It was already evening when, having 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 65 

cut as much of the best meat as we could 
carry from the bull, and tied a red hand- 
kerchief and some tufts of grass to his 
spiral horns, — which, by the way, must 
have been nearly five feet in length, — in 
the hope of keeping the jackals and aas- 
vogels (vultures) from him, we finally got 
back to camp, to find Pharaoh, who was 
getting rather anxious at our absence, 
ready to greet us with the pleasing intel- 
ligence that another ox was sick. But 
even this dreadful bit of intelligence could 
not dash Harry’s spirits ; the fact of the 
matter being that, incredible as it may 
appear, I do verily believe that in his 
heart of hearts he set down the death of 
that koodoo to the credit of his own skill. 
Now, though the lad was a tidy shot 
enough, this, of course, was ridiculous, 
and I told him so very plainly. 

“ By the time that we had finished our 


66 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


supper of koodoo steaks (which would 
have been better if the koodoo had been 
a little younger), it was time to get ready 
for Jim- Jims murderess again. All the 
afternoon, Pharaoh told us, the unfortu- 
nate ox had been walking round and 
round in a circle, as cattle in the last 
stage of redwater generally do. Now it 
had come to a standstill, and was swaying 
to and fro, with its head hanging down. 
So we tied him up to the stump of the 
tree, as on the previous . night, knowing 
that, if the lioness did not kill him, he 
would be dead by morning. Indeed, I 
was afraid that he would be of but little 
use as a bait, for a lion is a sportsman- 
like animal, and, unless he is very hungry, 
generally prefers to kill his own dinner, 
though, when once killed, he will come 
back to it again and again. 

“ Then we repeated our experience of 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 6j 

the previous night, sitting there, hour 
after hour, till at last Harry went fast 
asleep, and even I, though I am accus- 
tomed to this sort of thing, could scarcely 
keep my eyes open. Indeed, I was just 
dropping off, when, suddenly, Pharaoh 
gave me a shove. 

“ ‘ Listen ! ' he whispered. 

“ I was all awake in a second, and lis- 
tening with all my ears. From the clump 
of bush to the right of the lightning-shat- 
tered stump to which the ox was tied, 
came a faint, crackling noise. Presently 
it was repeated. Something was moving 
there, faintly and quietly enough, but still 
moving perceptibly, for, in the intense 
stillness of the night, any sound seemed 
loud. 

“ I woke up Harry, who instantly said, 
4 Where is she ? where is she ? ’ and began 
to point his rifle about in a fashion that 


68 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


was more dangerous to us and the oxen 
than to any possible lioness. 

“ ‘ Hush up ! ’ I whispered, savagely ; 
and, as I did so, with a low and hideous 
growl a flash of yellow light sped out of 
the clump of bush, past the ox, and into 
the corresponding clump upon the other 
side. The poor sick brute gave a sort 
of groan, and staggered round, and then 
began to tremble ; I could see it do so 
clearly in the moonlight, which was now 
very bright, and I felt a brute for having 
exposed the unfortunate animal to such 
terror as he must undoubtedly be under- 
going. The lioness, for it was she, passed 
so quickly that we could not even distin- 
guish her movements, much less shoot. 
Indeed, at night it is absolutely useless 
to attempt to shoot, unless the object is 
very close, and standing perfectly still ; 
and then the light is so deceptive, and 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 69 

it is so difficult to see the foresight, that 
the best shot will miss more often than 
he hits. 

“ ‘ She will be back again, presently,’ 
I said ; ‘ look out, but for heaven’s sake 
don’t fire unless I tell you to.’ 

“ Hardly were the words out of my 
mouth, when back she came, and again 
passed the ox without striking him. 

‘“What on earth is she doing?’ whis- 
pered Harry. 

“ ‘ Playing with it, as a cat does a mouse, 
I suppose. She will kill it, presently.’ 

“ As I spoke, the lioness once more 
flashed out of the bush, and this time 
sprang right over the doomed ox. 

“ It was an exciting sight to see her 
clear him in the bright moonlight, as 
though it were a trick that she had been 
taught. 

“ ‘ I believe that she has escaped from 


70 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


a circus,’ whispered Harry ; ‘ it’s jolly to 
see her jump.’ 

“ I said nothing, but I thought to my- 
self that, if it was, Master Harry did not 
quite appreciate the performance, — and 
small blame to him. At any rate, his 
teeth were chattering a bit. 

“ Then came a longish pause, and I 
began to think that she must have gone 
away, when, suddenly, she appeared again, 
and with one mighty bound landed right 
on to the ox, and struck it a frightful blow 
with her paw. 

“ Down it went, and lay on the ground. 
She put down her wicked -looking head, 
with a fierce growl of contentment. When 
she lifted her muzzle again, and stood 
facing us obliquely, I whispered, ‘ Now’s 
our time; fire when I do.’ 

“ I got on to her as well as I could, but 
Harry, instead of waiting for me, as I told 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


7 * 


him, fired before I did, and that, of course, 
hurried me. 

“ When the smoke cleared, however, 
I was delighted to see that the lioness 
was rolling about on the ground behind 
the body of the ox, which covered her 
in such a fashion, however, that we 
could not shoot again to make an end 
of her. 

“ ‘ She’s done for ! she’s dead ! ’ yelled 
Pharaoh, in exultation ; and, at that very 
moment, the lioness, with a sort of con- 
vulsive rush, half rolled, half sprang, into 
the patch of thick bush to the right. I 
fired after her as she went, but, so far as 
I could see, without result; indeed, the 
probability is that I missed her clean. At 
any rates, he got to the bush in safety, and, 
once there, began to make such a diaboli- 
cal noise as I never heard before. She 
would whine and shriek, then burst out 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


I 2 , 

into perfect volleys of roaring, that shook 
the whole place. 

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘we must just let her 
roar; to go into that bush after her at 
night would be madness/ 

“At that moment, to my astonishment 
and alarm, there came an answering roar 
from the direction of the river, and then 
another from behind the swell of bush. 
Evidently there were more lions about. 
The wounded lioness redoubled her ef- 
forts, with the object, I suppose, of sum- 
moning the others to her assistance. At 
any rate, they came, and quickly, too, for 
within five minutes, peeping through the 
bushes of our skerm fence, we saw a 
magnificent lion bounding along towards 
us, through the tall tamboulin grass, that 
in the moonlight looked for all the world 
like ripening corn. On he came, in great 
leaps, and a glorious sight it was to see 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. . 


73 


him. When within fifty yards or so, he 
stood still in an open space and roared, 
and the lioness roared, too; and then there 
came a third roar, and another great, black- 
maned lion stalked majestically up, and 
joined number two, and really I began 
to-realize what Jim-Jim must have under- 
gone. 

“ ‘ Now, Harry,’ I whispered, ‘ whatever 
you do, don’t fire, — it’s too risky. If they 
let us be, let them be.’ 

“ Well, the pair of them marched off to 
the bush, where the wounded lioness was 
now roaring double tides ; and the whole 
three of them began to snarl and grumble 
away together there. Presently, however, 
the lioness ceased roaring, and the two 
lions came out again, the black-maned 
one first, — to prospect, I suppose, — and 
walked to where the carcass of the ox 
lay, and sniffed at it. 


74 


ALLAN THE HUNTER , . 


“ 1 Oh, what a shot ! ’ whispered Harry, 
who was trembling with excitement. 

“‘Yes,’ I said; ‘but don’t fire; they 
might all of them come for us.’ 

“ Harry said nothing ; but whether it 
was from the natural wilfulness of youth, 
or because he was thrown off his balance 
by excitement, or from sheer recklessness, 
I am sure I cannot tell you, never having 
been able to get a satisfactory explana- 
tion from him ; but, at any rate, the fact 
remains, he, without word or warning, en- 
tirely disregarding my exhortations, lifted 
up his Westley Richards, and fired at the 
black-maned lion, and, what is more, hit 
it slightly on the flank. 

“ Next second there was a most awful 
roar from the injured brute. He glared 
around him, and roared with pain, for 
he was sadly stung; and then, before I 
could make up my mind what to do, the 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


75 


great black-maned brute, evidently igno- 
rant of the cause of his pain, sprang right 
at the throat of his companion, to whom 
he evidently attributed his misfortune. It 
was a curious sight to see the evident 
astonishment of the other lion at this 
most unprovoked assault. Over he rolled, 
with an angry roar, and on to him sprang 
the black-maned demon, and commenced 
to worry him. This finally awoke the 
yellow-maned lion to a sense of the situ- 
ation, and I am bound to say that he 
rose to the occasion in a most effective 
manner. Somehow or other he got to 
his feet, and, roaring and smarting fright- 
fully, closed with his mighty foe. And 
then ensued a scene that absolutely baffles 
description. You know what a shocking 
thing it is to see two large dogs fighting 
with abandonment. Well, a whole hun- 
dred of dogs could not have looked half 


76 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


so terrible as those two great brutes, as 
they rolled and roared and rent in their 
rage. It was an awful and a wonderful 
thing, to see the great cats tearing at each 
other with all the fierce energy of their 
savage strength, and making the night 
hideous with their heart- shaking noise. 
And the fight was a grand one, too. For 
some minutes it was impossible to say 
which was getting the best of it, but at 
last I saw that the black - maned lion, 
though he was slightly the bigger, was 
failing. I am inclined to think that the 
wound in his flank crippled him. Any 
way, he began to get the worst of it, which 
served him right, as he was the aggressor. 
Still, I could not help feeling sorry for 
him, for he had fought a gallant fight, 
when his antagonist finally got him by 
the throat, and, struggle and strike out 
as he would, began to shake the life out 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


77 


of him. Over and over they rolled to- 
gether, an awe-inspiring spectacle, but 
the yellow-boy would not loose his hold, 
and, at length, poor black - mane grew 
faint, his breath came in great snores, 
and seemed to rattle in his nostrils, then 
he opened his huge mouth, gave the ghost 
of a roar, quivered, and was dead. 

“ When he was quite sure that the vic- 
tory was his own, the yellow-maned lion 
loosed his grip, and sniffed at his fallen 
foe. Then he licked the dead lion s eye, 
and next, with his fore feet resting on the 
carcass, sent up his own chant of victory, 
that went rolling and pealing down the 
dark ways of the night in all the gathered 
majesty of sound. And at this point I 
interfered. Taking a careful sight at the 
centre of his body, in order to give the 
largest possible margin for error, I fired, 
and sent a .570 express bullet right 


78 


ALLAN THE HUNTER . 


through him, and down he dropped dead 
upon his mighty foe. 

“ At that, fairly satisfied with our per- 
formances, we slept peaceably till dawn, 
leaving Pharaoh to keep watch in case 
any more lions should take it into their 
heads to come our way. 

“ When the sun was fairly up, we arose, 
and very cautiously proceeded — at least 
Pharaoh and I did, for I would not allow 
Harry to come — to see if we could see 
anything of the wounded lioness. She 
had ceased roaring immediately on the 
arrival of the two lions, and had not 
made a sound since, from which we con- 
cluded that she was probably dead. I 
was armed with my express, while Pha- 
raoh, in whose hands a rifle was indeed 
a dangerous weapon, — to his companions, 
— had an axe. On our way we stopped 
to look at the two dead lions. They were 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


79 


magnificent animals, both of them, but 
their pelts were entirely spoiled by the 
terrible mauling they had given to each 
other, which was a sad pity. 

“ In another minute we were following 
the blood spoor of the wounded lioness 
into the bush, where she had taken refuge. 
This, I need hardly say, we did with the 
utmost caution ; indeed, I, for one, did not 
at all like the job, and was only consoled 
by the reflection that it was necessary, and 
that the bush was not thick. Well, we 
stood there, keeping as far from the trees 
as possible, and poking and speering about; 
but no lioness could we see. 

“ ‘ She must have gone away somewhere 
to die, Pharaoh,’ I said, in Zulu. 

‘“Yes, Inkoos’ (chief), he answered, ‘she 
has certainly gone away.’ 

“ Hardly were the words out of his 
mouth, when I heard a most awful roar, 


8o 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


and, looking round, saw the lioness emerge 
from the very centre of a bush, just behind 
Pharaoh, in which she had been curled 
up. 

“Up she went on to her hind legs, and, 
as she did so, I saw that one of her fore 
paws was broken near the shoulder, for it 
hung limply down. Up she went, tower- 
ing right over Pharaoh’s head, as she did 
so lifting her uninjured paw to strike 
him down. And then, before I could 
get my rifle round, or do anything to 
avert the coming catastrophe, the Zulu 
did a very brave and clever thing. Re- 
alizing his own imminent danger, he 
bounded to one side, and then, swing- 
ing the heavy axe round his head, brought 
it right down on to her back, severing the 
vertebrae, and killing her instantaneously. 
It was wonderful to see her collapse, all in 
a heap, like an empty sack. 



“LOOKING AROUND, HE SAW THE LIONESS EMERGE FROM 
THE VERY CENTRE OF A BUSH.” 






























































. 
























































' 





A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 


“ ‘ My word, Pharaoh,’ I said, ‘ that was 
well done, and none too soon.’ 

“‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘it was a good 
stroke, Inkoos. Jim-Jim will sleep better 
now.’ 

“ Then, calling Harry to us, we exam- 
ined the lioness. She was old, if one 
might judge from her worn teeth, and not 
very large, but thickly made, and must 
have possessed extraordinary vitality to 
have lived so long, shot as she was ; for, 
in addition to her broken shoulder, my ex- 
press bullet had blown a great hole in her 
that one might have put one’s fist into. 

“ Well, that is the story of the death 
of poor Jim-Jim, and how we avenged 
it; and it is rather interesting in its way, 
because of the fight between the two 
lions, of which I never saw the like in 
all my experience, and I know something 
of lions and their ways.” 


82 


ALLAN THE HUNTER. 


“ And how did you get back to Pil- 
grims’ Rest?” I asked hunter Quater- 
main, when he had finished his yarn. 

“ Ah, we had a nice job with that,” 
he answered. “ The second ox died, and 
so did another ; and we had to get on as 
best we could with the three remaining 
ones, harnessed unicorn fashion, while we 
pushed behind. We did about four miles 
a day, and it took us nearly a month, 
during the last week of which we pretty 
well starved.” 

“ I notice,” I said, “ that most of your 
trips ended in disaster of some sort or 
another, and yet you went on making 
them, — which strikes one as a little 
queer.” 

“Yes, I dare say; but then, remember, 
I got my living, for many years, out of 
hunting. Besides, half the charm of the 
thing lay in the dangers and disasters, — 


A TALE OF THREE LIONS. 83 

though they were terrible enough at the 
time. Another thing is, they were not all 
disastrous. Some time, if you like, I will 
tell you a story of one which was very 
much the reverse, for I made four thou- 
sand pounds out of it, and saw one of the 
most extraordinary sights a hunter ever 
clapped his eyes on ; but it’s too late, 
now, and, besides, I’m tired of talking 
about myself. Good-night.” 






PRINCE: 


ANOTHER LION 




PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


Casper Graham stood by a table in 
his father’s workroom, attentively read- 
ing something of great interest in a news- 
paper by the fast-failing light which stole 
in through the glass door. He was alone ; 
around him on every side were jars, great 
and small, retorts, crucibles, scales, mor- 
tars, pestles, and numberless bottles, 
empty and full, all arranged neatly upon 
the shelves against the walls. 

Casper’s father was a chemist, and pre- 
pared nearly all the drugs and medicines 
used in and about Mount Morgan. He had 
had a good medical education, and there 
were a number of poor people living near 
who preferred to take his advice to that 
of the regular physician of the place. 

87 


88 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


On the table, near Casper, stood a large 
phial, containing a dark fluid. A label 
pasted around it had these words : “ For 
Mr. Jenks. io drops on retiring .” 

A slight sound at the door made Casper 
raise his head, lay down the paper, and 
take up the bottle, expectantly. 

“Oh,” said he, setting down the bottle 
again, as a little girl, with a flat basket 
held carefully in both hands, pushed her 
way in. “ I thought you were old Mr. 
Jenks, Winnie.” 

“ Do I look like old Mr. Jenks?” asked 
Winnie, laughing. 

“ Well, no,” replied Casper, “ I can’t say 
you do ; but I have been waiting here for 
more than an hour, and I wish he would 
come. Father told me he would be here 
before dark, and that I must wait and give 
him this medicine.” 

“What is the matter with Mr. Jenks 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 89 

now ? ” asked Winnie, depositing the bas- 
ket on the table. 

“ I heard him tell father that he had not 
slept a wink for seven nights.” 

“Oh! poor man,” said Winnie, pityingly, 
“ I hope this stuff will put him asleep.” 

“ Father said it would be sure to,” re- 
plied Casper, glancing at the door again, 
“ but I do wish he would come ! ” 

“What have you been reading?” asked 
Winnie, as she picked up her basket again. 

“ Another account of the fire in the 
menagerie.” 

“ Oh ! is there more about it to-day ? ” 
inquired Winnie, with interest. 

“Yes, lots more. It tells just how the 
elephant ripped up the walls of his house 
with his great tusks, and walked out 
and stood close by, looking calmly on at 
the raging flames; and how the giraffe 
screamed, and the monkeys climbed off 


90 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


into the trees, and the tiger was so fright- 
ened that he could scarcely be persuaded 
to move, although the fire was creeping 
nearer and nearer every moment, and — 
oh, lots ! We'll take the paper home.” 

“ Were any of the animals hurt?” asked 
Winnie. 

“ Only Prince, the big lion. You re- 
member Prince, don’t you ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, I remember him well. He 
was so tame ! I should not have minded 
opening the door for him to walk out.” 

“ I know you tried to feed him,” inter- 
rupted Casper, “ and when you held the 
cake out he struck his great paw through 
the bars, and if the keeper had not pulled 
you back your arm would have been man- 
gled. You should be more cautious with 
lions, Winnie.” 

“ But I don’t believe that good, mild 
Prince would ever hurt any one.” 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


9 1 


“ He never will now,” said Casper, 
slowly, “because he is burnt to ashes in 
the fire.” 

“Burnt to ashes?” repeated Winnie, 
with a look of horror. “ I thought you 
said he was only hurt.” 

“ No,” replied Casper ; “ the paper says 
the fire started somewhere near his cage, 
and that the smoke was so thick, and the 
flames so fierce, that it was more than an 
hour before they could reach it, and that 
the walls fell in, and they have not even 
found his bones, because the bricks and 
rubbish are piled in heaps above the spot 
where the cage once stood. So, of course, 
he is in ashes.” 

“Oh ! oh ! ” said Winnie, sadly. “ I wish 
I could have let him out of his hateful 
cage that day. Poor thing ! how he wan- 
dered up and down, and looked at every 
one as though he were saying, ‘ Please 


9 2 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION 


open the door and let me have just one 
long run.’ ” 

“ Well, he is free now,” said Casper, 
taking up the phial and moving towards 
the door, to watch through the glass for 
Mr. Jenks. 

“ So he is ! ” said Winnie, thoughtfully. 
Then she added, quickly, “ Oh ! Casper, 
I forgot ! I came to tell you some- 
thing.” 

“Well?” said Casper, turning back. 

“ Mother is going to stay with aunt 
Eliza this evening because the baby is 
not well, and I am going home and am 
to set the table, and we are to have tea all 
alone ! Won’t it be perfectly splendid ? ” 

“All right,” replied Casper, good-na- 
turedly, “let’s go. Mr. Jenks will come 
round to the house if he really wants 
his medicine.” 

“Yes, he will,” replied Winnie. “Let 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


•93 


me carry the medicine, and you take the 
pie. It is a little soft, and wabbles, and 
I am dreadfully afraid I shall spill it.” 

“ A pie ! ” said Casper, wonderingly, 
peeping into the basket. 

“ Yes,” replied Winnie ; “ and I made 
it all myself at aunt Eliza’s, this after- 
noon. I put heaps of mince in it, and 
raisins and orange-peel and all kinds of 
things, and it is lovely.” 

“ Then what makes it wabble ? ” asked 
Casper, doubtfully. 

“ That’s because the crust is very, very 
rich,” explained Winnie, “ and the mince 
very, very juicy.” 

“ Well, I’ll carry it. I’ll put some 
coal on the fire to have it all right for 
father.” 

Casper pulled open the stove door as he 
spoke, and the glow of the fire filled the 
room with a pleasant red light that shone 


94 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION 


among the glass jars and bottles, making 
them all sparkle. 

“ Casper,” said Winnie, suddenly, “when 
I came up through Mrs. Bent’s garden I 
heard the butcher’s dog moving behind 
the wood-pile.” 

“ What makes you think it was the 
butcher’s dog ? ” asked Casper, as he 
threw a shovelful of coals on the fire. 
“ Did you see it ? You are a funny 
girl ! ” 

“ No,” said Winnie, hesitatingly, “but it 
sounded dreadfully big. So I think you 
would better bring the poker or something 
of that kind out with us. 

At that moment, both children heard 
a loud thump at the door. 

“There is Mr. Jenks, now,” cried Casper, 
joyfully, throwing down the shovel, and 
snatching up the phial. 

“ Come in, Mr. Jenks,” cried Winnie. 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


95 


But there was no sign of any one 
through the glass panes that covered the 
upper half of the door, and Winnie 
thought this very singular. She whis- 
pered, “ I don’t believe it is Mr. Jenks, 
after all. Oh, dear!” she cried out, gath- 
ering her skirts about her, and clasping 
the basket containing the mince pie close 
to her side as the door slowly opened. 
“ It’s the butcher’s dog, Casper ! ” 

A great hairy head was thrust slowly 
around the door, then an immense paw 
followed. 

Winnie and Casper stared in wonder 
and alarm, for, large as the butcher’s 
dreaded dog always appeared, it had 
never looked anything like the size it did 
to-night, as it stood, half in and half out 
of the doorway, with the reflection of the 
fire gleaming on its great yellow eyes and 
shaggy head. 


g6 PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 

“ It is not a dog ! ” gasped Casper, as 
he clutched Winnie’s arm. “ It is Prince, 
the lion ! ” 

At the sound of his name, Prince — for 
it was Prince — rubbed himself slowly 
against the door, exactly as a cat does 
when she expects a saucer of milk. Then 
he came quite into the room ; and, feeling 
the pleasant warmth, stretched himself, 
and yawned. 

That dreadful yawn — neither of the 
children ever forgot it — displayed the 
great beast’s immense white fangs, and 
thick, red tongue. 

“ If you don’t want to make a supper 
for him,” cried Casper, dragging Winnie 
after him as he spoke, “ follow me.” 

First he climbed upon the heavy table 
under the shelves. Winnie stumbled up, 
too. 

The lion gave a kind of a cry between 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


97 


a whine and a roar, and rubbed himself 
once more against the door, which closed, 
heavily. 

“ Where shall we go ? ” cried Winnie, in 
terror, when she saw what had happened. 

“ Don’t stop to cry, but come on,” re- 
plied Casper. 

“Where?” asked Winnie, looking wildly 
about her. 

“Up to the very top shelf,” cried Cas- 
per, pointing to the row of shelves close 
to the table. 

“ Go first,” said Winnie, with her eyes 
fixed on the unwelcome intruder. “ Then 
you can reach down, and give me your 
hand.” 

Casper did not waste a moment, but 
scrambled up the shelves like a monkey. 

“Hurry, hurry!” cried he, reaching 
down, impatiently. 

“ First take the pie,” said Winnie. 


98 PRINCE: ANOTHER LION 

“ Oh, throw it away ! ” cried Casper, in 
agony. 

“ Indeed I will not,” replied Winnie, 
decidedly, as she forced the basket into 
his hand. 

Casper seized it, and flung it on the 
shelf. 

Prince, at that moment, gave a low, 
impatient cry, and made a movement 
towards the table. 

Winnie never knew how she performed 
the feat, but, in an instant more, she 
was safely seated upon the upper shelf, 
among the glass jars, with her feet tucked 
under her, watching the lions restless 
movements. 

Prince wandered backward and forward, 
lashing his tail, and glancing up towards 
the children at every turn. 

He did not look so good and mild 
then as Winnie had remembered, though 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


99 


Prince really was a mild lion, as lions 
go- 

After awhile, when Casper and Winnie 
found that the lion could not reach them, 
they grew calmer, and began to speak in 
whispers. 

“ What I am afraid of,” said Casper, 
glancing anxiously at the door, “ is that 
some one will try to come in, and that 
Prince will spring at them.” 

“ Oh ! ” cried Winnie, with a sob, “ sup- 
pose mother should ? ” 

“ She will not be home for ever so 
long, you know,” said Casper, in a trem- 
bling tone. 

“ Look,” cried Winnie, grasping Cas- 
per’s arm, and pointing to the door, “ who 
is that ? ” 

“ Poor old Mr. Jenks,” whispered 
Casper. 

Fortunately, at that moment, Prince 


IOO 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION 


took it into his head to squat down, with 
his back directly against the door. 

Mr. Jenks turned the knob, but the 
door would not budge an inch. 

Casper and Winnie screamed, “ Go 
away! go away!” but, as Mr. Jenks was 
very hard of hearing, he did not notice 
the warning, but began to look in around 
the room. He looked everywhere except 
directly beneath the window, and upon 
the upper shelf. So he saw only an 
empty room, with the firelight shining 
pleasantly over the walls and floor. After 
trying the door once more, with a disap- 
pointed glance backward he disappeared 
from view. 

“ Poor man,” said Winnie, pityingly, 
“ he will stay awake all night again, I 
am afraid. What did you do with the 
medicine, Casper?” 

“ It is here,” replied Casper, thought- 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


IOI 


fully, pointing to the phial, which he had 
unconsciously held fast in his hand. 

After a few moments, Prince began to 
grow restless again. He roamed about 
the room several times, then he stood 
with his fore paws upon the table, and 
“ mewed ” up at them, until Winnie hid 
her head in her hands, and trembled all 
over. 

“ He must be very hungry,” she whis- 
pered, as she looked out between her 
fingers. “ He cannot have been fed since 
the fire. I wonder if he would eat my 
pie.” She drew the basket towards her 
as she spoke. 

“ Stop,” whispered Casper, suddenly, “ I 
am thinking of something. If Prince 
would only go to sleep we might climb 
down, run out, and lock him in — don’t 
you see ? ” 

“ If,” repeated Winnie. 


102 


PRINCE : ANOTHER LION. 


“ Well, see here,” said Casper, still in 
a low voice, as though he thought the 
lion might hear his plan. “ It says, on 
Mr. Jenks’s bottle, ‘ Ten drops on retiring/ 
Now, if ten drops will make Mr. Jenks 
sleep, this whole big bottleful ought to 
make a lion go fast asleep in a short 
time.” 

“ But how are you going to make him 
drink it ? ” asked Winnie, wonderingly. 

“ Give me yqur pie,” replied Casper. 
“ You say it has meat in it. Prince will 
eat it, as he is so hungry — don’t you 
see ? ” 

Winnie saw. She handed him the 
basket. Casper lifted out the pie, and, 
breaking a hole in the upper crust, poured 
the contents of the phial into it. Then 
he dropped the pie down upon the floor. 

Prince, after one or two dissatisfied 
growls, which made Winnie’s heart beat 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


103 


-very fast, began to consider, with vari- 
ous sniffs, the mince pie. He ended, 
much to Casper’s delight, in eating 
every morsel, and lapping the floor 
around where it had fallen. Then he 
sat down, and fixed his eyes on the chil- 
dren, as though he expected something 
more. 

“ Oh ! he has not had half enough,” 
sobbed Winnie, in despair. 

“Wait,” said Casper, hopefully, “ I think 
he looks a little sleepy.” 

Crouching near the ceiling, the children 
watched their jailer anxiously; but for a 
long, long time they could not see that 
Mr. Jenks’s medicine had any effect on 
him. But, after a time, his great staring 
eyes seemed to lose some of their fire ; 
presently his head drooped a little, and 
after awhile he began to move unsteadily 
towards the stove. Finally, he flung him- 


io4 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


self down before it, and — became perfectly 
quiet — stretched out comfortably in the 
red heat. Just' as the lion appeared to 
have fallen into a heavy sleep, the chil- 
dren heard a sound at the door, and saw 
that Mr. Jenks had returned. He opened 
the door a little way, caught sight of the 
lion lying upon the floor, took off his 
glasses,' rubbed them several times, and 
came a little nearer. Winnie was about 
to scream, to warn the old man of his 
danger; but Casper placed his hand over 
her mouth, and whispered in her ear, 
“Take care, you will awake Prince. Then 
we cannot try to go, you know.” 

After a long, puzzled, and horrified look, 
Mr. Jenks hastily retreated. In doing so 
he dropped the heavy cane he carried, and 
it fell to the floor with a loud noise ; and 
at that Prince at once raised his head, 
and staggered to his feet with a loud 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 105 

yawn. Casper settled back — it would 
not do to try to descend. 

Poor old Mr. Jenks stumbled through 
the door, closed it after him, and turned 
the key, which was on the outside, and 
the children heard him go hurriedly 
down the path. 

Meanwhile, Prince settled back to his 
old position, and again became quiet. 
Winnie and Casper watched him for 
many minutes before they ventured to 
attempt the climb down. But, at last, 
Casper put his feet upon the under shelf, 
and — alas ! in doing so he displaced a 
glass jar, and it fell crashing to the floor; 
and, again disturbed, Prince gave another 
cross, prolonged whine. 

“ There is no use,” whispered Winnie, 
“ even if you could get down without 
awaking him — don’t you remember that 
Mr. Jenks locked the door?” 


io 6 PRINCE: ANOTHER LION 

“ Oh, dear,” replied Casper, as the tears 
sprang to his eyes, “ we must wait until 
some one else comes.” 

The fire grew low, and black shadows 
crept into the room, until it was so dark 
that they could see nothing but the mon- 
sters tawny mane and great paws, upon 
which a streak of light from the stove 
still lingered. The children were growing 
very hopeless and tired, when, suddenly, 
a noise arose in the garden adjoining, — 
the sound of wheels, tramping feet, and 
loud voices ; presently, lights flashed in 
through the window, numbers of faces 
were pressed against the glass ; then, 
after a moment, the door was unlocked 
very cautiously, and the two trembling 
children saw the lion’s keeper come slowly 
in. He held in his hand a thick, short 
whip, and a great muzzle; a collar and 
chain hung clanking over his arm. He 


PRINCE : ANOTHER LION. 


107 


advanced on tiptoe, cautiously came near, 
but Prince did not move. 

“ Bring in the cage,” called the keeper, 
“there is no danger, — he’s dead, I 
think.” 

At that moment Winnie heard her 
father’s voice in the garden, crying, 
“ Where are my children ? are my chil- 
dren there? My children are not in the 
house ! ” 

The crowd of people, consisting of al- 
most all the inhabitants of Mount Mor- 
gan, with old Mr. Jenks at their head, 
now began to force their way into the 
laboratory. 

“ If the children were in here,” cried 
one, in a voice of horror, pointing to the 
lion, “ he has eaten them ! ” 

A dozen voices cried out at once, in 
every tone of terror and horror. 

The keeper looked around the room, 


Iq8 PRINCE: ANOTHER XION. 

and shook his head. The chemist him- 
self stood in the door, white and dumb, 
as if dead. Winnie tried to call out to 
him, but could not, and Casper pulled her 
back, and whispered, “ I am so ashamed 
to be seen up here, don’t you know ? don't 
speak.” 

But at sight of her father* with such 
a dreadful expression, she could not keep 
still, even for Casper’s sake. Her voice 
broke free, and, reaching down, she called 
out, “ Papa ! papa ! here we are ! ” 

Every one in the room sprang forward, 
and there was a general shout of joy. 

Winnie was helped down from her high 
perch, Casper clambering after, and was 
so surrounded, and so many questions 
asked of her, that she grew bewildered, 
and looked round for Casper to speak, — 
but he had disappeared, evidently dis- 
gusted with himself for not having dis- 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION 


IO9 


played all the courage and skill of a 
professional lion-tamer. 

Presently the keeper came to her : 

“ Little girl, will you try and tell me 
if this lion looked sick when you first 
saw him ? ” 

“ No,” replied Winnie, faintly, “only 
hungry. ,, 

“ Then I wonder what is the matter 
with him ? ” said the keeper. 

“•He ate my pie,” replied Winnie. 

“ Then your pie must have been an 
awful indigestible one,” replied the keeper, 
looking still more puzzled. 

“ No, it was not,” said Winnie, now 
lifting her head, indignantly. “ It was 
a very nice pie. It was Mr. Jenks’s 
medicine that Casper put in the pie that 
made Prince go to sleep.” 

“Mr. Jenks’s medicine!” exclaimed her 
father. 


I IO 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION 


“ My medicine?” cried Mr. Jenks, look- 
ing angrily at the lion. 

“Yes,” said Winnie, “we wanted to get 
down, you know.” 

Every one in the room now laughed 
aloud, — all but the keeper, who looked 
rather anxiously at the sleeping lion. 
“Will it kill him, do you think?” he 
asked, turning to the chemist. 

“ Oh, no ! ” said Doctor Graham, “ but 
they have given him enough to make .ten 
lions sleep several hours.” 

After this explanation the lion was 
fearlessly laid hold upon by the men, 
and dragged off and put into the cage 
upon wheels, which had been brought to 
the door by the keeper, — a very sound- 
asleep lion, indeed. 

Then every one went home. 

As soon as he recovered from the 
effects of Mr. Jenks’s medicine, Prince 


PRINCE: ANOTHER LION. 


1 1 I 


became so notorious that he was visited 
even more than ever, and was still more 
“ good and mild ; ” but nothing could per- 
suade Winnie to go near the new men- 
agerie, though the keeper complimented 
both her and Casper with season tickets ; 
and, although she is an old woman now, 
she has never looked upon a lion since 
that evening in her fathers laboratory — 
nor has she tasted of a mince pie. 





































































































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